Anyone done 1-60 non-raf recently?

[Khatovar]

I'm currently at about 17 days /played 1-77 on my newest 5-man. No RAF, no boosting, no heirloom items. Of course there's a good bit of idle time in there with bringing up Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Engineering and Enchanting, and generally dicking around.

Overall, it sucked. I felt like I was dragging ass through most of the old world even though I skipped a ton. Outland went faster than I expected. I did Hellfire, Zangar, Terrokar and Nagrand...I could have left for Northrend halfway through Nagrand, but I get all OCD sometimes. Not something I have any intention of doing again until the expansion. Even then I'd probably have to be pretty bored or pretty desperate for a class I don't have.

[lans83]

Still workin on my teams and yes, it is sucking, the slow trek without the RAF. So far my teams are:

Priest + 3 Hunters Lvl 48 (Priest leads)
4 Locks Lvl 30 (I can just imagine my victim's reactions when they have 4xCurse of Agony + 4xCorruptions hit them all of a sudden)
4 Druids Lvl 25 (Feral is awesome this way)
4 Pallies Lvl 50 (My favorite team now. Plaguelands are more enjoyable now. Can't wait till I can get into Stratholm)

So far those are the teams I'm working on, next will be my Warrior leading either two Mages or two Priests for dps and a Priest for heals. Yes, it is slow and at times painful, but I didn't really want to exploit the RAF deal to begin with. It just woulda burnt me out quicker IMO on playin if I powerleveled all my toons up so fast. I got burnt out on my Hunter before the Lich King after I got him to 70 and got his Gladiator set, so I started working on more alts after him. I didn't have time to run instances, so PvP was about all I could do to get new and better gear with him.

Times can vary on leveling speeds according to your play schedule and style. Don't take on any crafting/gathering proffessions and you will level faster. Pick good spots to grind for xp, or run instances over and over you know you can clear easily and fast without wiping with your teams. I'm just now hitting up Western Plaguelands with my Pallies and these zombies are goin down really fast. I'm actually able to round up good size mobs and just toss down 4xConsecrations+4xHoly Wraths and they're down in no time.

At first, I was gonna try and get all my Hunters to 80 first, highest toon I have is 74, and use them to grind the BGs and instances for the heirlooms, but at this rate, I think my Pallies will do that now. Better chance running that team thru instances since I have an actual tank other than a bear, or 4 bears to use that'll die easier. I'm still able to do old world instances with both teams without wiping, much, but grinding can get old for anyone. When you run your teams, make sure to take on quests you haven't done before on your other toons, if any at all. Collection quests can make it seem painful to some, but it can also be a reason for you to grind for xp. Looting on slaves is the painful part IMO, even with the new 'Interact with target' option. That's about the biggest problem I have with having to grind mobs outside instances. On that note, there are upsides to doing collection quests. 1, you get a shitload of xp just from running and gunning mob, depending on the team mockup. 2, humanoid mobs can provide a steady income for your team as you grind, along with good clothe stacks to either use or sale for more money. 3, skinnable beasts are also a good thing to grind on as well for the same reason as the clothe. 4, rep from kills, if you're getting any at all. I went from 0 neutral to friendly with the Argent Dawn on my Pally team from completing 2 quests and grinding the zombies at the graveyard outside Uthor's Tomb in about an hour, if that. Not sure really how much rep I got from the quests, but still, this can help give you a goal to work on as well. I'm gonna be in the Plaguelands now till I hit 58, then off to Outlands for me for the better gear.

Like Ugh, alot of my time on my teams were spent on professions, going afk, and talking to friends instead of actually playing. Hold these off till you hit the level cap if you want to make leveling faster. Even gathering ones. Herb is the worst to try and skill up. Mining is second, but atleast you can get it up most of the way from smelting now. More now than you could in the past. Skinning's not so bad, but can be a pain if it's on your slaves. Then you have to deal with the lag from getting them to target the corpse then skin it. It's easier and faster if done on your main. The added +Crit Chance from Anatomy helps you hold aggro on tanks.Wish I woulda thought about that before leveling up my crafting proffs on my main so much when I started out. :/

[falsfire3401]

I did a two-man group of pally and priest. Took about 6.5 days /played

[Starbuck_Jones]

Right now it takes me about 13h played time to RAF from 1-60. w/o RAF it should take about 40 hours to do the same thing so over all time its not too bad. However time is money and buying 2 battlechests for $50 is well worth the extra 26 hours it would take in my book. If you boost up more than one group the $cost savings per hour gets even better.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Right now it takes me about 13h played time to RAF from 1-60. w/o RAF it should take about 40 hours to do the same thing so over all time its not too bad. However time is money and buying 2 battlechests for $50 is well worth the extra 26 hours it would take in my book. If you boost up more than one group the $cost savings per hour gets even better.

If you're talking blowing up instances with a geared-to-the-nines 80, you're probably right. For us quest-junkies, non-RAF questing is the PITS as you can't just knock off the non-collection quests and move on to the next zone. :P

Just as an update to the thread, I have three other comments re: non-RAF leveling. My shams are 79.8 at 13d4h played.

• Go start the argent crusade quest line in Icecrown as soon as you ding 77. (see point 2)
• Daily quests on the blimp and ebon blade and argent tournament all give normal quest XP (22k for normal, 33k for group dailies) and they open up very soon after you get the quest lines going.
• LEVEL AS MELEE OMG (see last paragraph below; obvious caveat is obvious: only applies to shams/druids)

I did all of Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord and Dragonblight. Skipped Grizzly Hills except for the Drakuru quest series to open up the DTK quests (about 36 total?). Did most of Zul'drak to open up Gundrak quests and finish the elites out there for the blue gear upgrades (about 79 total). Then went and did all pit/arena challenge quests in Northrend (with my 80s swapping out for tank duty), which yielded some nice gear updates. Skipped Sholazar and Storm Peaks completely and immediately went to Icecrown after hitting 77 doing the arenas.

As of now, I'm a little over 13days /played, have about 1400ish spellpower in my caster mail suit (including flametongue weapon; almost all mail, no crafted 80 stuff, which is in the bank waiting for my ding 80!) which will set me up nicely to start heroics at 80. I'm on phase 2 of the argent tourny dailies, so that's progressing nicely.

All in all, when undead hunters go live, I'll roll a set of those and be basically through leveling new alts for a while as I have priests, mages and locks at 70. With the knowledge after doing 3 runs to 80 non-raf, I've enjoyed the current one much better skipping Sholazar/Stormpeaks as those zones are just a PITA for me and not fun, IMO. Having epic flight (tome+cash) immediately at 70 has helped a LOT. If you have 80s, DO your dailies and get them the mounts/tome ASAP. You won't regret the money spent one iota.

Why do I say level as melee? Well, two reasons, mainly. First, melee is stupid powerful against most of the stuff my casters had trouble with and you can stack survivability gear and it works with melee specs. Second, if you're melee, you're already standing right next to the mob for group looting quest items and skinning corpses, burning them, using quest items on them, etc. A third good reason is that caster gear at sub-78ish levels just ain't much to write home about. Neither is melee but the effecitveness of crappy melee gear is better usually than bad caster gear as the stats help more.

[Fat Tire]

I
All in all, when undead hunters go live, I'll roll a set of those and be basically through leveling new alts for a while as I have priests, mages and locks at 70.

I want to race change my hunters to undead as soon as that service becomes available!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I want to race change my hunters to undead as soon as that service becomes available!

A better option to be sure. Forgot I had a set of 5 orcs at 60. May have to do that instead. :P

On another note, ding 80 on the shams.

[Vicker]

Right now it takes me about 13h played time to RAF from 1-60. w/o RAF it should take about 40 hours to do the same thing so over all time its not too bad. However time is money and buying 2 battlechests for $50 is well worth the extra 26 hours it would take in my book. If you boost up more than one group the $cost savings per hour gets even better.

We're not talking about manual labor here. We're talking about playing a video game.

I don't understand why people would play this game if they don't enjoy leveling. The end game content really isn't that different from what you see while leveling. When the next expansion comes out, I fully intend to make a new team at level 1 and level them without RAF, taking my sweet time checking out all the new stuff they're putting in.

People who hate hiking shouldn't hike up mountains just to see a nice view from the top.

[shaeman]

People who hate hiking shouldn't hike up mountains just to see a nice view from the top.

But people who want to see the nice view might have to put up with the dreadful hike if there are no cable cars/ helicopters.

[Katharsis]

It's good to hear from you, Vicker. I've been playing since Jan 2005 and my highest level is 64. The only time I pull a group of five together is to do an instance. I most frequently play groups of two, trying out different combinations of classes, doing the same quest days in a row just to see how different classes perform the same task. I just recently started playing DKs and am having a ball playing solo, blowing through quests that I had struggled with before.

After spending so many dollars on games I'd get tired of quickly it's nice to have found one with some longevity.